Chafee signs R.I. climate change bill during seaside ceremony

NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. –Officials gathered at Town Beach on Friday to commemorate Rhode Island’s most ambitious response to climate change.

Richard Salit Journal Staff Writer richsalit

NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. –Officials gathered at Town Beach on Friday to commemorate Rhode Island’s most ambitious response to climate change.

The occasion was Governor Chafee’s ceremonial signing of the Resilient Rhode Island Act, the state’s first comprehensive climate change bill, overwhelmingly passed by the General Assembly in June.

Chafee, a long-time advocate for addressing climate change, said “extreme weather is here…We want to prepare for that. We know it’s occurring. We know it’s as a result of human activity. So we are taking action here in Rhode Island.”

Rhode Island joins about a dozen other states — including Massachusetts and Connecticut — that have enacted similar laws.

The law creates the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council to oversee efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The council will be supported by a 13-member advisory board, to be appointed by the governor and General Assembly, and a nine-member science and technical advisory board.

The Department of Administration’s statewide planning office is charged with leading community efforts to adapt to a changing climate, such as protecting natural buffers in flood-prone areas, encouraging low-impact development and green infrastructure, and updating building codes.

The state Department of Environmental Management, with its duties to regulate air quality, will be tasked with meeting targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The reduction targets are 10 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, 45 percent by 2035 and 80 percent by 2050. The law requires the climate council to submit by 2017 a report on how the state can meet these targets.

North Kingstown was chosen as the location because the town’s planning office has spearheaded several pilot programs to project how Wickford and other areas would be impacted by flooding from storm surges atop sea level rise.

Among the speakers were the state lawmakers who sponsored the legislation: Sens. Susan Sosnowksi and William Conley and Rep. Arthur Handy. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a climate change champion in Washington, also attended.